Monday, July 31, 2017

A handful of people working at a handful of tech companies steer the thoughts of billions of people every day, says design thinker Tristan Harris. From Facebook notifications to Snapstreaks to YouTube autoplays, they're all competing for one thing: your attention. Harris shares how these companies prey on our psychology for their own profit and calls for a design renaissance in which our tech instead encourages us to live out the timeline we want.

This talk was somewhat surprising for TED, as it is a leftist organization that stands squarely in favor of robots enslaving us all.

Sure enuf, as the speaker finished, the TED boss came onto the stage to defend Facebook and Google. He said, "There is no shortage of good intent." In other words, as long as Google and Facebook are left-aligned and using their power for progressive purposes, we should give them a pass.

For Google and other internet companies, there’s a fine line between making money by putting ads on screens, and driving web users away with ads that drive us insane.

There is probably no type of online advertisement that makes us quite as insane as the auto-play video ad — the noisy box of moving pictures that pops up unasked for and blares at us, often with no way to close it other than exiting the website.

This type of ad was singled out by Google in June as particularly noxious and deserving of extinction.

“It’s far too common that people encounter annoying, intrusive ads on the web — like the kind that blare music unexpectedly,” Google’s senior VP of ads and commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy wrote in a June blog post. ...

But Ramaswamy’s comments came in June. It’s July now. And things have changed, apparently.

“Google has begun testing putting one of the most divisive features of the modern web experience, the auto-playing video, directly into search results,” The Guardian reported July 26.

“The videos automatically play for desktop users only, and are shown but require a tap to play for mobile users.”

Why, Google, why?

“We are constantly experimenting with ways to improve the search experience for our users,” the company told the paper.

Do your kidneys have a sense of smell? Turns out, the same tiny scent detectors found in your nose are also found in some pretty unexpected places -- like your muscles, kidneys and even your lungs. In this quick talk (filled with weird facts), physiologist Jennifer Pluznick explains why they're there and what they do.

Last year, a paper published in Sciencemade waves with the stunning claim that the human nose can detect a whopping one trillion different odors. But if you feel like your nose can’t detect a trillion smells, you may be on to something. It’s possible that none of us can.

As a Caltech researcher pointed out last fall, and a new Arizona State University paper asserts today, the data collected in last’s year odiferous study does not support this radical claim. Rather, the researchers’ interpretation of their data — and the massive figure they came to —seem to be the result of flawed mathematical logic. And that’s a big problem, because the one trillion odor estimate is already making its way into neuroscience textbooks, misinforming students, researchers, and the public.

This was embarrassing for AAAS Science to publish such bogus reasoning in 2014, but worse for TED Talks to be repeating discredited science in 2017.

Friday, July 28, 2017

On any given day, tens of thousands of men are fighting in family courts to remain in their children’s lives. They argue their cases before biased judges, who apply biased laws, in a system built around that idea that mothers are the more important parent, and that fathers’ proper familial role is limited to mailing a child-support check. Many men lack the financial resources to even fight, as legal expenses can easily run into the thousands before even a single court date.

It is against this bleak landscape that the United States Supreme Court issued in June 2017 a promising new father’s rights case, Sessions v. Morales-Santana. ...

The Morales-Santana case strikes down a legal preference received by mothers over fathers, finding that it violated the fathers’ rights to equal protection under the US Constitution. The case is one of only a few Supreme Court cases that have decided family-law issues on the basis of fundamental rights, making it especially important because the constitutional principles it sets out will now apply to all laws, both state and federal, everywhere in the country. The Court seems to have used this case to make a deliberate statement about father’s rights. ...

The decision stands for the principle that it is unconstitutional for the law to assume either that: (1) unwed fathers are less qualified, entitled, or willing than mothers to take responsibility for their children, or (2) the mother’s relationship with the child is more important than the father’s.

Here is the court's actual reasoning:

(1) At the time §1409 was enacted as part of the Nationality
Act of 1940 (1940 Act), two once habitual, but now untenable, assumptions pervaded the Nation’s citizenship laws and underpinned judicial and administrative rulings: In marriage, husband is dominant, wife subordinate; unwed mother is the sole guardian of a nonmarital child. In the 1940 Act, Congress codified the mother-as-soleguardian perception for unmarried parents. According to the stereotype, a residency requirement was justified for unwed citizen fathers, who would care little about, and have scant contact with, their nonmarital children. Unwed citizen mothers needed no such prophylactic, because the alien father, along with his foreign ways, was presumptively out of the picture. Pp. 9–13.

(2) For close to a half century, this Court has viewed with suspicion laws that rely on “overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females.” Virginia, 518 U. S., at 533. No “important [governmental] interest” is
served by laws grounded, as §1409(a) and (c) are, in the obsolescing view that “unwed fathers [are] invariably less qualified and entitled than mothers” to take responsibility for nonmarital children. Caban v. Mohammed, 441 U. S. 380, 382, 394. In light of this equal protection jurisprudence, §1409(a) and (c)’s discrete duration-of-residence requirements for mothers and fathers are anachronistic. Pp. 13–14.

No, I do not think that the 1940 Act relied on those assumptions.

The Act was about citizenship, and it gave weight to demonstrable objective ties to the USA. Such as spending 9 months in the womb of a citizen. Or marriage to a citizen.

Unwed dads may be just as qualified and willing to take responsibility, but it is not evidenced in the legal documents, and the law reasonably gives weight to the legal documents.

The court opinion was written by Ginsburg, a follower of the strain of Jewish feminism that denies human nature in favor of equality principles. The MRA movements seems to be adopting the values of the left by pleading those same equality principles.

The opinion complains about the “obsolescing view that unwed fathers [are] invariably less qualified and entitled than mothers”, but mothers usually win child custody in court anyway. Why is that?

Ginsburg is attacking a straw man, as no one ever say dads were "invariably less qualified".

The net effect if the opinion is to make it harder for women to pass American citizenship to their kids.

Citizenship law ought to take into account realities of human nature. That's just my opinion, and I guess no one cares about that. I did not see any criticism of this court decision, even tho it is anti-nature, anti-marriage, anti-woman, and anti-citizenship. The common sense of Congress 50 years ago is no longer defended.

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Religion comes in countless forms, depending either on the soil from which that religion arose or the soil in which it was planted. What we call Christianity in America is not what Guatemalans call Christianity. It’s not what Iraqis call Christianity. What we call Islam in the United States is vastly different from Islam in Iran or Saudi Arabia or Nigeria or Indonesia.

The notion that religion clashes with a culture is a misunderstanding of what religion is, but, more specifically, the idea that Islam clashes with American culture is just foolishness, naiveté, and lies. There is no clash between Islam and American culture. In fact, there is no clash between any religion and any culture because religions are inextricably linked to culture.

Aslan is mainly known for writing silly books claiming that Christianity is a religion of war and Islam is a religion of peace.

Americans very much distinguish between religion and culture. Moslems usually do not.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

An age-long discussion of Jewish attitudes to non-Jews had been pushed out of the central stage by the counter-discussion of goyim’s attitudes to Jews (beastly, anti-Semitic, prejudiced, leading to Holocaust, denying humanity). In the still uncensored corners and nooks of the Web, one still can find references to Jewish holy books and what do they allegedly say about non-Jews. All these references are soundly trashed and refuted by a plethora of Jewish sites robustly defending Talmud and later texts. The defenders of Jewish faith say that the quotes mean something completely different, they are taken out of context and the translation is wrong anyway. Or, often, they say that such a quote can’t be found in the mentioned book, or even the book can’t be found. ...

RES asks a good question: who cares whether the Bible uses the word ‘adam’ for Jews only, for we know that non-Jews are also human and they are the same as Jews in their appearance. And he answers this question disclosing a cabbalistic ‘secret’, that is the deepest meaning of the text. The Gentiles are actually non-human but beasts created to serve Jews. They have human shape for two very different reasons. One, it is more pleasant and respectable for a Jew to be served by a beast in human shape, than by a beast in a beast’s shape. Two, a non-Jew may join Jews, while if he were in the shape of beast, he wouldn’t be able to. ...

To conclude this already too long piece: there are more than one point of view among Jews on this subject. In postmodern times, there are LGBT “synagogues”, there are pork-eating “Jews”, there are female “rabbis”, and there are goy-loving and goy-hating “Jews”. The late great Prof Yeshayahu Leibowitz (d. 1994) used to say that a Jew can hold any belief at all or no belief whatsoever; he is only obliged to observe mitzvoth, commandments.

There are other ethnic groups who have traditions of thinking that they are better than everyone else.

Monday, July 24, 2017

Consider that roughly 30 percent of Americans report they have felt in contact with someone who has died. Nearly 20 percent believe they have been in the presence of a ghost. About one-third of Americans believe that ghosts exist and can interact with and harm humans; around two-thirds hold supernatural or paranormal beliefs of some kind, including beliefs in reincarnation, spiritual energy and psychic powers. ...

People who do not frequently attend church are twice as likely to believe in ghosts as those who are regular churchgoers. The less religious people are, the more likely they are to endorse empirically unsupported ideas about U.F.O.s, intelligent aliens monitoring the lives of humans and related conspiracies about a government cover-up of these phenomena. ...

The less religious participants were, we found, the less they perceived their lives as meaningful. This lack of meaning was associated with a desire to find meaning, which in turn was associated with belief in U.F.O.s and alien visitors.

When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.

Atheism seems also to be associated with certain political beliefs. It is amazing how many believe that there is some sort of govt conspiracy to cover up Russian influence. Or how American atheists like to bash white Christians, but ostracize anyone who similarly criticizes Islam.

For a man who claims to be "waking up", Harris appears to be sound asleep to all the points Adams makes. Adams patiently explains Trump's method, and Harris repeatedly argues that Trump is just stupid, dishonest, and self-destructive.

It is funny how much time Harris spent on subjects he knows the least about. Harris has training in neuroscience, and Adams came onto the interview mainly wanting to talk about emotional and other arguments influence the human brain, but Harris addressed very little of that. Harris kept talking about climate change, but he seemed to know nothing but some leftist talking points, such as that we should not call it global warming and that 97% of scientists agree.

Adams challenges Harris for claiming to know what Trump is thinking, and Harris doesn't even seem to realize he is doing that.

Harris argued that Trump must be bad because Elon Musk took a risk to his reputation by dropping out of a Presidential advisory committee. Of course Harris has no idea whether that was risky or not.

Saturday, July 22, 2017

If you had consulted me, or if you had done even rudimentary fact-checking, you would have concluded that I have never used abusive speech against Islam. I have called IslamISM “vile” but surely you, of all people, understand that Islamism is not the same as Islam. I have criticised the ridiculous pseudoscientific claims made by Islamic apologists (“the sun sets in a marsh” etc), and the opposition of Islamic “scholars” to evolution and other scientific truths. I have criticised the appalling misogyny and homophobia of Islam, I have criticised the murdering of apostates for no crime other than their disbelief. Far from attacking Muslims, I understand – as perhaps you do not – that Muslims themselves are the prime victims of the oppressive cruelties of Islamism, especially Muslim women.

I am known as a frequent critic of Christianity and have never been de-platformed for that. Why do you give Islam a free pass? Why is it fine to criticise Christianity but not Islam?

First, there is no generally-agreed difference between Islamism and Islam. The term "Islamism" is just some sort of insult against Islam.

Second, saying that Muslims are the victims of Islamism is like saying Communists are the victims of Communism. Somewhat true, but just an odd way to play a victim card.

Third, the Left does not approve of Islam, but they are much more interested in exterminating white Christianity, and they see Islam as an ally. So they like Dawkins as long as he attacks white Christians, as he usually does.

Fourth, abuse of Trump and Trump voters is cheered by both Dawkins and KPFA. So "abuse" is not really the issue.

Dawkins wants credit for criticizing the murdering of apostates, but he does not get it. The Ctrl-Left would probably like to murder its own defectors. And pointing out the barbaric aspects of Islam makes Christianity look good by comparison, and the Ctrl-Left does not like that.

Friday, July 21, 2017

In 1986, Adams gathered a group of 20 scientists, including biologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists, to issue what became known as the Seville Statement on Violence. It declared, among other things, that “it is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent behavior is genetically programmed into our human nature.” The statement, later adopted by UNESCO, an agency of the United Nations that promotes international collaboration and peace, was an effort to shake off the “biological pessimism” that had taken hold and make it clear that peace is a realistic goal. ...

“I think the growing evidence about innate propensities for violence have shown [the Seville statement] rather clearly to be simplistic and exaggerated at best,” says Wrangham.

And more likely, an outright lie perpetrated by blank slate leftists who deny human nature.

My guess is that they are worried that if they admit that there are genes for violence, then that suggests that some people will be innately more violent than others. That seems obvious to me, but I guess that some deny it.
The article is from another site, that features this article from a black professor:

The word “Caucasian” is used in the U.S. to describe white people, but it doesn’t indicate anything real. It’s the wrong term to use! ...

One reason we keep using the term “Caucasian” is that the U.S. legal system made use of Blumenbach’s taxonomy. As early as 1790 the first naturalization law was passed, preventing foreigners who were not white from becoming citizens. ...

A second reason the term has had staying power is that, as new immigrants began to stream into the country in the 20th century, political leaders and scientists supported a new racial science called eugenics that built on 19th-century notions of race. Eugenicists divided Caucasians into four ranked subraces: Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, and Jew (Semitic). I’m sure you will not be surprised to learn that the Nordics were ranked highest intellectually and morally. ...

Today, the word “Caucasian” is still used in many official government documents, and it continues to carry a kind of scientific weight. For example, it is found in social science and medical research, and is used by some colleges and universities in their data collection and distribution of student, staff, and faculty statistics. ...

What can we do to change it? We need to acknowledge that the word “Caucasian” is still around and that its continued use is problematic. We should use terms that are more accurate, such as “European-American.” Doing so would at least be consistent with the use of descriptive terms like “African-American,” “Mexican-American,” and others that signify both a geographical and an American ancestry.

The bottom line is that it is time for a modern — and accurate — terminology. The use of an outdated and disproven term that falsely purports to describe a separate race of people has no place in the U.S.

-- Yolanda Moses is a professor of anthropology and the associate vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and excellence at the University of California, Riverside. Her research focuses on the broad question of the origins of social inequality in complex societies.

She can call herself negro, black, African-American, or anything else, and no one cares. It is odd for her to tell others how to identify themselves.

She says the term inaccurate, outdated, and disproven, but her only arguments are that she does not like some of the reasons that some people have used the term historically.

Some call themselves Mexican-Americans, but they often call themselves hispanics, latinos, chicanos, or la raza.

I see this article as another academic attempt to de-legitimize white Americans. The author is obviously pre-occupied with her black skin, and hates white people.

In space and on planets like Mars, our environment must be thought of as precious. ...

As we build new societies in space, cultural difference and all forms of diversity will also be precious assets, the results of millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of experience and history. ...

The United Nations reports that there are now more refugees than at any time in human history since WWII, and that “one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum.” This humanitarian crisis, the environmental crisis of climate change, ongoing wars, inequality, and injustice are all tests of our ability and will to build a future for the planet and all the species who share it. How we respond to these challenges today will demonstrate whether we are prepared to go back to the moon, onward to Mars, and beyond.

As bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and fear continue to shape policy and debates, I am reminded of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who warned: “If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.”

Thursday, July 20, 2017

You don’t have to take my word for the centrality of slavery to the Confederate cause, or even the word of the overwhelming majority of Civil War historians. Take that of Confederate President Jefferson Davis himself, who unequivocally stated in 1861 that the cause of his state’s secession was that “she had heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races.” Or that of Davis’s vice president, Alexander Stephens, who famously avowed that “slavery . . . was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution” and that protecting it was the “cornerstone” of the new Confederate government. Consider also the Southern states’ official statements outlining their reasons for secession, which focus on slavery far more than any other issue.

Abraham Lincoln repeatedly stated his war was caused by taxes only, and not by slavery, at all.

"My policy sought only to collect the Revenue (a 40 percent federal sales tax on imports to Southern States under the Morrill Tariff Act of 1861)." reads paragraph 5 of Lincoln's First Message to the U.S. Congress, penned July 4, 1861.

"I have no purpose, directly or in-directly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so," Lincoln said it his first inaugural on March 4 of the same year.

Even if you had a time machine to take you bak to 1861, you could not resolve this by asking Lincoln, a soldier, or anyone.

Note that the slave trade had been abolished at least 50 years before.

Compare this to the modern slave trade, by which I mean the induced movement of millions of ppl to fill labor markets.

Much has been written about the strange bedfellows of the establishment left. What unites feminists, Islamists, anarchists, Bernie-bros, LGBTQ+, BLM rioters, and Hillary voters often seems to be little more than rebellious hatred for Western Civilization. However, that still does not explain what motivates their upper-echelon donors. What causes the—mostly white and male—chairmen and executives of the Western, corporate elite to financially support the very people who would gladly see them hanged in the streets?

The short answer is a deadly combo of greed and virtue-signaling, exacerbated by a small cohort of anti-white agitators. While this is a varied and complicated issue, for simplicity’s sake this article will focus solely on the effects this has on immigration policy. ...

I would not be surprised if 10% or more of global CO2 emissions can be attributed to the modern slave trade.

Here is an explanation from a libertarian economics professor in an elitist British mag:

Making Nigerians stay in Nigeria is as economically senseless as making farmers plant in Antarctica,” argue Mr Caplan and Mr Naik. And the non-economic benefits are hardly trivial, either. A Nigerian in the United States cannot be enslaved by the Islamists of Boko Haram.

Bryan Caplan appears to confirm all 3 reasons.

All 3 arguments are dubious. Let's compare again to the negro slave trade of 1800. It apparently provided the labor to pick cotton, but surely the external costs were much greater. The Civil War itself must have more than wiped out all the money that was ever made on cotton.

There is also a myth that our economy is improved by having more consumers buying more goods. Economists create this myth by the way they calculate GDP, and saying silly things like consumer spending being two thirds of the economy.

The cheap virtue-signaling is maybe the most disgusting of all the arguments. Caplan acts as if there is something noble about buying slaves from Boko Haram and sabotaging societies elsewhere.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Comments that attack another person’s motivation, intelligence, or character are bad because they degrade the quality of the discussion and discourage thoughtful comments by others. For some reason, human beings often are confident that they can discern the hidden motivation for another person doing or saying something. Trained psychiatrists and psychologists, however, do very poorly at this task, so what hope is there for a lay person?

I agree with this.

In political discusssions, and in others with controversy, many people immediately launch into theories about motivations, and then into ad hominem attacks.

Such remarks are nearly always inaccurate, and do not advance the discussion. As explained above, trained experts are really poor at mindreading. Nevertheless, it is so common that it is considered "neurotypical" to do it. If it were not so common, it would be considered a mental disorder.

Consider the many attacks on President Trump in the news media. Most of the attacks do not address his policies, and just make personal attacks on him. Worse, they often claim to say what Trump is thinking or intending, even tho they are obviously misinterpreting him. Most of Trump's words and actions are very transparent, and yet most of the commentators badly misunderstand them.

That being said, I will sometimes speculate about what someone is thinking. Sometimes I find useful explanations that way. But I do not take it too seriously, unless there is some way to determine whether I am right or wrong.

Monday, July 17, 2017

Researchers in Sweden have listed the top four things people can do to reduce their carbon footprint.

The report in the journal Environmental Research Letters described a “missed opportunity” to let people know the most effective steps they can take to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a primary driver of global warming.

“We found there are four actions that could result in substantial decreases in an individual's carbon footprint: eating a plant-based diet, avoiding air travel, living car free and having smaller families,” said lead author Seth Wynes of Lund University in Sweden.

“For example, living car-free saves about 2.4 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, while eating a plant-based diet saves 0.8 tons of CO2 equivalent a year.”

By far the biggest action was having one less child, which saves an average of 58.6 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emission reductions per year, the report said.

“A US family who chooses to have one fewer child would provide the same level of emissions reductions as 684 teenagers who choose to adopt comprehensive recycling for the rest of their lives,” it said.

Sweden already has a low birth rate, as Swedes have decided to re-populate the country with Moslems.

The Moslem immigration program is where the large carbon footprint is. If there is a “missed opportunity”, then it is to stop or reverse the immigration.

Sweden will go down in history as a great example of a nation committing national suicide.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Harvard students may neither join nor participate in final clubs, fraternities or sororities, or other similar private, exclusionary social organizations that are exclusively or predominantly made up of Harvard students, whether they have any local or national affiliation, during their time in the College. The College will take disciplinary action against students who are found to be participating in such organizations. Violations will be adjudicated by the Administrative Board.

So Harvard students cannot join an off-campus club of their choosing.

I went to Princeton where there is a long tradition of students joining off-campus clubs. Those clubs are some of the most independent anywhere, as they have no affiliation with the university or with any national organization. The university administration has hated the clubs for a century, because they are not subject to taking orders from deans.

Harvard College rescinded admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021 after the students traded sexually explicit memes and messages that sometimes targeted minority groups in a private Facebook group chat.

A handful of admitted students formed the messaging group—titled, at one point, “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens” — on Facebook in late December, according to two incoming freshmen.he

In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking ...

Friday, July 14, 2017

The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History is a 1916 book of scientific racism by American eugenicist, lawyer, and amateur anthropologist Madison Grant. Though influential, the book was largely ignored when it first appeared; it went through several revisions and editions, but was never a best seller.[1] Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority and argues for a strong eugenics program.

Grant's proposal to create a strong eugenics program for the Nordic population to survive was repudiated by Americans in the 1930s and Europeans after 1945. It is considered one of the main works in the 20th century tradition of scientific racism and has been described as "The Manifesto of Scientific Racism".[2]

I knew that eugenics was popular a century ago, particularly among intellectuals and socialists, but I thought that concern over white genocide was more recent. I guess that observers have been pointing out these demographic trends for a century.

Another book that probably could not be published anymore is The Great Heresies, 1938, by Hilaire Belloc. It has a chapter on "The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed".

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass extinction is underway, new research finds.

It is comforting to hear that it is irreversible, because then we should not have a big political debate over what to do about it.

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls the current decline in animal populations a “global epidemic” and part of the “ongoing sixth mass extinction” ...

Gerardo Ceballos, ... acknowledged that the study is written in unusually alarming tones for an academic research paper. “It wouldn’t be ethical right now not to speak in this strong language to call attention to the severity of the problem,” he said.

Dr. Ceballos emphasized that he and his co-authors, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo, both professors The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls the current decline in animal populations a “global epidemic” and part of the “ongoing sixth mass extinction” caused in large measure by human destruction of animal habitats. The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena.

Gerardo Ceballos, a researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, acknowledged that the study is written in unusually alarming tones for an academic research paper. “It wouldn’t be ethical right now not to speak in this strong language to call attention to the severity of the problem,” he said.

Dr. Ceballos emphasized that he and his co-authors, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo, both professors at Stanford University, are not alarmists, but are using scientific data to back up their assertions that significant population decline and possible mass extinction of species all over the world may be imminent, and that both have been underestimated by many other scientists.

Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born May 29, 1932) is an American biologist, best known for his warnings about the consequences of population growth ...

Ehrlich became well known for his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb, which asserted that the world's human population would soon increase to the point where mass starvation ensued.[3][4] Among the solutions he suggested in that book was population control, to be used in his opinion if voluntary methods were to fail. Ehrlich has been criticized for his opinions; for example, Ronald Bailey termed Ehrlich an irrepressible doomster.

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...[5]

If this is not alarmism, what is?

Back to the NY Times article:

Conservatively, scientists estimate that 200 species have gone extinct in the past 100 years; the “normal” extinction rate over the past two million years has been that two species go extinct every 100 years because of evolutionary and other factors.

We have many millions of species on Earth. I suspect that the normal extinction rate is a lot higher.

Dr. Ehrlich, who rose to prominence in the 1960s after he wrote “The Population Bomb,” a book that predicted the imminent collapse of humanity because of overpopulation, said he saw a similar phenomenon in the animal world as a result of human activity.

“There is only one overall solution, and that is to reduce the scale of the human enterprise,” he said. “Population growth and increasing consumption among the rich is driving it.” ...

Dr. Ehrlich, however, continued to sound the alarm. “We’re toxifying the entire planet,” he said.

When asked about the clear advocacy position the paper has taken, a rarity in scientific literature, he said, “Scientists don’t give up their responsibility as citizens to say what they think about the data that they’re gathering.”

Maybe they have a responsibility to report the data, but to inject their personal political opinions into their science papers?

Erlich appears to be blaming population growth among the rich, but that is false. Rich folks are barely reproducing at all. If anything, the blame belongs to population growth among the poor who are reproducing at higher rates, and increasing their consumption and ecological impact.

Erlich is a leftist, so he avoids putting his finger on the problem, but the main extinction problem areas are in Africa, India, and China. They are essentially the same places as the runaway human population growth.

On Thursday, Elon Musk was taken to musing about the world's population. On Twitter, he replied to a 2016 New Scientist article titled: The world in 2076: The population bomb has imploded.

"The world's population is accelerating towards collapse, but few seem to notice or care," he tweeted. ...

"After hitting the demographic doldrums, no country yet has seen its fertility recover. Many demographers expect a global crash to be under way by 2076," says the article's author, Fred Pearce.

Pearce specifically mentions Japan, where the fertility rate -- based on the population of women aged 15 to 44 -- is 1.4 children per woman.

This is nonsense. Japan is overpopulated, and needs a reduction.

The UN projects Sub-Saharan Africa to reach 4B ppl this century. China and India are growing beyond what their resources can support. All of the major environmental issues, from global warming to everything else, are really over-population problems.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

A smart home device alerted authorities to an alleged assault at a residence in New Mexico earlier this week.

Eduardo Barros was house-sitting with his girlfriend and her daughter Sunday night at a residence in Tijeras, some 15 miles east of Albuquerque. The couple got into an argument and the altercation became physical, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff Department's spokesperson, Deputy Felicia Romero.

Barros allegedly wielded a firearm and threatened to kill his girlfriend, asking her: "Did you call the sheriffs?" A smart speaker, which was hooked up to a surround sound system inside the home, recognized that as a voice command and called 911, Romero said.

The sheriff's department said deputies arrived on scene and were able to remove the woman and her daughter from the residence. The woman sustained injuries from the altercation but was not taken to a hospital. Her daughter was unharmed, according to Romero.

A crisis negotiation team, as well as a SWAT team, were deployed to the home and were able to take Barros into custody after an hours-long stand-off, Romero said.

Authorities said the smart device potentially played a life-saving role in the incident.

Most ppl probably think this is great. Furthermore, they probably see it as desirable to have robots reporting domestic violence, because the girlfriend may not act in her own best interest.

Cops, prosecutors, judges, or other officials will decide whether couples have a healthy relationship, and issue restraining orders if they don't. Eventually robots may make those decisions.

Eventually robots could police use of profane language, offensive opinions, discriminatory practices, failure to recycle trash properly, or anything else political incorrect.

Update: Amazon says that it was unlikely that its Echo/Alexa product was used, contrary to the police report. The point remains that such a product could be making 911 calls, based on an AI analysis of private conversations.

Sunday, July 09, 2017

“Unless we set our house in order, the doom will sooner or later overtake us all. And that would mean that the race obviously endowed with he greatest creative ability, the race which had achieved most in the past and which gave the richer promise for the future, had passed away, carrying with it to the grave those potencies upon which the realization of man’s highest hopes depends,” wrote Stoddard in his 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy.

I had never heard of that book, but it is freely online. It is filled with plain talk that is considered impolite today. It calls World War I the "White Civil War".

Here is what is says about California:

Our Pacific coast takes precisely the same attitude. Says Chester H. Rowell, a California writer: “There is no right way to solve a race problem except to stop it before it begins.... The Pacific coast is the frontier of the white man’s world, the culmination of the westward migration which is the white man’s whole history. It will remain the frontier so long as we regard it as such; no longer. ...

Says another Californian, Justice Burnett: “The Pacific States comprise an empire of vast potentialities and capable of supporting a population of many millions. Those now living there propose that it shall continue to be a home for them and their children, and that they shall not be overwhelmed and driven eastward by an ever-increasing yellow and brown flood.”[177]

All “economic” arguments are summarily put aside. “They say,” writes another Californian, “that our fruit-orchards, mines, and seed-farms cannot be worked without them (Oriental laborers). It were better that they never be developed than that our white laborers be degraded and driven from the soil. The same arguments were used a century and more ago to justify the importation of African labor.... As it is now, no self-respecting white laborer will work beside the Mongolian upon any terms. The proposition, whether we shall have white or yellow labor on the Pacific coast, must soon be settled, for we cannot have both. If the Mongolian is permitted to occupy the land, the white laborer from east of the Rockies will not come here — he will shun California as he would a pestilence. And who can blame him?”[178] ...

Fortunately, the majority of thinking Americans are to-day convinced that Oriental immigration must not be tolerated. Most of our leading men have so expressed themselves. For example, Woodrow Wilson, during his first presidential campaign, declared on May 3, 1912: “In the matter of Chinese and Japanese[Pg 287] coolie immigration, I stand for the national policy of exclusion. The whole question is one of assimilation of diverse races. We cannot make a homogeneous population of a people who do not blend with the Caucasian race. Their lower standard of living as laborers will crowd out the white agriculturist and is in other fields a most serious industrial menace. The success of free democratic institutions demands of our people education, intelligence, and patriotism, and the State should protect them against unjust and impossible competition. Remunerative labor is the basis of contentment. Democracy rests on the equality of the citizen. Oriental coolieism will give us another race-problem to solve and surely we have had our lesson.”[181]

Slate mentions this book with a claim that it has some similarity to Trump's message.

And if we don’t forget who are, we just can't be beaten. Americans will never forget. The nations of Europe will never forget. We are the fastest and the greatest community. There is nothing like our community of nations. The world has never known anything like our community of nations.

We reward brilliance. We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression. (Applause.)

I guess the idea is that writing symphonies and pursuing innovation are things that white people do. Praising these things is just a sneaky way of expressing white identity politics. Or so is the theory. Likewise defending Western Civilization or free speech or American values will be considered pro-white, because mainly white people care about these things.

Obviously there is huge overlap between the creators of modern civilization and whites, Christians, English (and related language) speakers, etc. If the folks at Slate like to think of civilization as white culture, it is a first approximation.

Friday, July 07, 2017

The evidence, however, suggests that Trump’s unlikely victory is better understood as the death rattle of White Christian America — the cultural and political edifice built primarily by white Protestant Christians — rather than as its resuscitation. Despite the election’s immediate and dramatic consequences, it’s important not to over-interpret Trump’s win, which was extraordinarily close. Out of more than 136 million votes cast, Trump’s victory in the Electoral College came down to a razor-thin edge of only 77,744 votes across three states: Pennsylvania (44,292 votes), Wisconsin (22,748 votes), and Michigan (10,704 votes). These votes represent a Trump margin of 0.7 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 0.7 percentage points in Wisconsin, and 0.2 percentage points in Michigan. If Clinton had won these states, she would now be president. And of course Clinton actually won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes, receiving 48.2 percent of all votes compared to Trump’s 46.1 percent. The real story of 2016 is that there was just enough movement in just the right places, just enough increased turnout from just the right groups, to get Trump the electoral votes he needed to win.

I previously posted that Trump's winning margin was about 80k, so I guess this is the more accurate number after all the counts came in.

Jones spends most of the rest of the article expressing how he is baffled that white evangelicals Protestants supported Trump. However, the answer is revealed in his data:

Just a few weeks before the 2016 election, 66 percent of white evangelical Protestants said the growing number of newcomers from other countries threatens traditional American customs and values.

Yes. Trump promised to help preserve American customs and values, while Democrats try to destroy them. It is not hard to understand why traditional Americans would favor Trump.

In his speech in Poland on Thursday, Donald Trump referred 10 times to “the West” and five times to “our civilization.” His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means. It’s important that other Americans do, too.

The West is not a geographic term. Poland is further east than Morocco. France is further east than Haiti. Australia is further east than Egypt. Yet Poland, France, and Australia are all considered part of “The West.” Morocco, Haiti, and Egypt are not.

The West is not an ideological or economic term either. India is the world’s largest democracy. Japan is among its most economically advanced nations. No one considers them part of the West.

The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white. Where there is ambiguity about a country’s “Westernness,” it’s because there is ambiguity about, or tension between, these two characteristics. Is Latin America Western? Maybe. Most of its people are Christian, but by U.S. standards, they’re not clearly white. Are Albania and Bosnia Western? Maybe. By American standards, their people are white. But they are also mostly Muslim.

Steve Bannon, who along with Stephen Miller has shaped much of Trump’s civilizational thinking, has been explicit about this. In a 2014 speech, he celebrated “the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam” and “our forefathers” who “bequeathed to use the great institution that is the church of the West.”

I believe that Miller is Jewish and Bannon is not religious, but I could be wrong.

What should the The Atlantic change its bigoted, biased, Westophilic name to? The World-Ocean might sound good to you at first, but it discriminates against inland countries, such as Niger.

The West refers to a whole set of ideas, beliefs, traditions, cultures, peoples, etc. that go back to ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, to European Middle Ages and Enlightenment, and to creation of the USA. It does not include China. The concept has been in common use for centuries.

There are ppl with theories that China and India have not progressed the same way because of racial, genetic, religious, cultural, geographic, or other factors. These theories are interesting, but there is no consensus, as far as I know. I do not think that any such theory is necessary to understand that Western Civilization is a good thing, and worth defending.

As I write this, Rush Limbaugh is playing tapes of Ronald Reagan talking about defending Western Civilization and American values in terms very similar to Trump's speech. No one should be surprised that Reagan Republicans support Trump.

Thursday, July 06, 2017

I posted how CNN was blackmailing a reddit poster into silence, under threat of doxing him, but I did not know why. Apparently the guy had posted details on how the big majority of CNN management and personalities are Jews.

I did not know that CNN was a Jewish network. That explains a lot.

I am not saying this is wrong. They are free to belong to any religion they want. There are Christian channels with Christian programming, and there is Al Jazeera with their view. If you watch CNN, you can expect views that are hostile to white Christians. For all I know, CNN broadcasts all these kooky Russian conspiracy theories because they perceive Russia to be a white Christian country and they hate white Christians.

CNN did threaten to dox someone for making fun of CNN, and succeeded in blackmailing the guy to remove posts about Jews on CNN.

Wednesday, July 05, 2017

In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, Dr. Krause and his colleagues report that Africans did indeed walk out — over 270,000 years ago.

Based on newly discovered DNA in fossils, the researchers conclude that a wave of early Homo sapiens, or close relatives of our species, made their way from Africa to Europe. There, they interbred with Neanderthals. ...

The new study raises a host of tantalizing implications about human history.

It is not possible to know just how many times these early Africans interbred with Neanderthals. But somewhere in prehistory, at least one female human from Africa must have carried the child of a male Neanderthal.

“Now you have this hybrid child, which is probably pretty unusual-looking,” Dr. Siepel said. “One way or another, this hybrid individual was absorbed into Neanderthal society.”

Not only that, but such hybrids are the ancestors of all modern non-Africans.

All of this calls into question the conventional wisdom that Neanderthals were some sort of non-human species. Neanderthals and Africans (at the time) were just two races of humans that occasionally interbred. This research implies they interbred 270k years ago, and other work implies interbreeding 50k years ago. Maybe Denisovans were another race. These races were as modern and as human as the others. More African DNA has survived than Neanderthal, but the DNA differences are not well understood.

Monday, July 03, 2017

In the matter of immigration, mark this conservative columnist down as strongly pro-deportation. The United States has too many people who don’t work hard, don’t believe in God, don’t contribute much to society and don’t appreciate the greatness of the American system.

They need to return whence they came. ...

And then there’s the all-important issue of demographics. The race for the future is ultimately a race for people — healthy, working-age, fertile people ...

Bottom line: So-called real Americans are screwing up America. Maybe they should leave, so that we can replace them ...

O.K., so I’m jesting about deporting “real Americans” en masse.

I am not sure what the joke is. He proposes deporting the white Christians, and re-populating the country with Jewish slave-masters and brown-skinned slaves.

This is some sort of NY Times Jewish fantasy that can only be articulated behind closed doors, or as a joke?

Or maybe he is speaking in code, and he really wants to deport all the Arabs, Somalis, Chinese, and others that he considers undesirable?

I don't think that the NY Times would publish an opinion column by a non-Jew saying things like this. Does being Jewish mean a license to create racial hatred?

Saturday, July 01, 2017

A Democratic congressman has proposed convening a special committee of psychiatrists and other doctors whose job would be to determine if President Donald Trump is fit to serve in the Oval Office.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who also teaches constitutional law at American University, has predictably failed to attract any Republicans to his banner. ...

Raskin's bill would allow the four Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to each choose a psychiatrist and another doctor. Then each party would add a former statesman – like a retired president or vice president.

The final group of 10 would meet and choose an 11th member, who would become the committee's chairman.

Once the group is officially seated, the House and Senate could direct it through a joint resolution to conduct an actual examination of the president 'to determine whether the president is incapacitated, either mentally or physically,' according to the Raskin bill.

And if the president refuses to participate, the bill dictates, that 'shall be taken into consideration by the commission in reaching a conclusion.'

As far as I know, there is only one religion that believes in this sort of thing. And that religion is always trying to impose its silly views on the rest of us.